SRC, the defense contractor formerly called Syracuse Research Corp., celebrated a big milestone Wednesday. It now employs 1,000 people, up 100 from a year ago -- and has more jobs to fill.

"I'm very optimistic about the future," Robert U. Roberts, the company's president and chief executive officer since 1991, told employees during a celebration at SRC's headquarters on Round Pond Road in Cicero. "I hope I'm standing up here when we say we have 2,000 employees."

Roberts said the company has 80 to 100 jobs to fill, many of them electrical and computer engineering positions.

SRC has become a leader in the design, development and manufacture of advanced radar, electronic warfare and communications systems for the military. Among its more recent products is a device that jams radio-controlled roadside bombs, which are a major threat to U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The company also does environmental work, but that represents only about 10 percent of its business.

"We're a defense contractor," Roberts said. "That's the market we are in and that's where we're going to stay."

U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei, D-DeWitt, who attended the event, praised the company's work. He said SRC's products are saving lives in Afghanistan.

"The work you do is so vitally important in the defense of our country," he said.

Maffei also praised the company's nearly constant expansion of its work force. The not-for-profit company has 12 offices throughout the country. Seven hundred of its 1,000 employees are in Central New York.

"We're in the middle of a recession," Maffei said. "You're not supposed to be announcing more jobs. Yet that's what you're doing."

Created by Syracuse University in 1957, SRC went independent in the 1970s and moved off campus to Cicero in 1997.